


Candles and Cake

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-23
Updated: 2006-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has never liked his birthday. He doesn't like a day that's designed to remind him of all the things he doesn't have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candles and Cake

Four weeks before his twenty-third birthday, Sam puts a handgun to his brother's head and pulls the trigger three times.

-

The clothes are from Goodwill and the Matchbox cars used to be Dean's. It's all junk, stupid junk and he's too embarrassed to even look at the presents and he never gets anything good. He yells at Dad in the kitchen, ignoring the candles melting wax onto the stupid cake, yells at Dad for never getting a real job so they can have good stuff and yells at him for not even caring that everything they have is trash.

Then Dad starts yelling back, sends Sam to his room without cake, and Sam slams the door as hard as he can.

When he wakes up later, hot and hungry and feeling so guilty he thinks he might be sick, he finds the clothes folded at the foot of his bed and the shoebox full of toy cars beside them. He puts on one of the shirts -- wearing somebody else's old clothes isn't so different from wearing Dean's old clothes, he tells himself -- and he takes the cars downstairs, out to the little patio behind their apartment, and he asks, quietly, if maybe Dean wants to play with the cars for a little while.

And they spend the evening running the cars up and down the cement patio, along the low brick wall, crashing them and racing them and digging them into holes. Once when Sam looks up he sees Dad watching them through the kitchen window, but the light is behind him and he just looks like a shadow and Sam can't see his face.

-

Three weeks before his twenty-third birthday, Sam stands by the side of an empty two-lane Indiana highway and refuses to turn around to watch red taillights fade in the distance.

-

His friends take him out, tease the waitress into checking his ID just to prove he's legal, buy him ridiculous colorful drinks with funny names and foul-tasting shots, and he drinks and laughs and stumbles home as the sun is coming up, just like a normal twenty-first birthday should be. He sleeps until mid-afternoon, when Jess comes into the bedroom and sits on the edge of the bed.

You got a package, she says, holding the brown-wrapped box on her lap. No return address.

Sam squints in the afternoon light and yawns, takes the box from her and looks at it. It's surprisingly heavy and something inside is rattling. The postmark is from South Carolina, the handwriting is familiar.

I'll open it later, he says, setting it aside, and he closes his eyes again.

-

Two weeks before his twenty-third birthday, Sam slumps in a chair by a bed in a sterile hospital room, long after visiting hours are over, holding Dean's hand while he sleeps, listening to the quiet beeping of the monitor and praying to a god he isn't even sure he believes in.

-

He doesn't remember his first birthday, of course, but he thinks about it all the time.

He looks at the photograph of the pretty blonde woman he never knew, traces the edge of her face, notices that there is dust collecting on the glass.

I don't feel guilty, he thinks, because that wouldn't make sense. Just a baby, couldn't have done a thing, couldn't even walk or talk or remember.

He's not feeling guilty. He's just thinking about it, and wondering, and then he puts the picture away.

-

One week before his twenty-third birthday, Sam sits upright and eager in a rain-soaked tent in Nebraska, surrounded by the smell of mud and desperation, the soft murmurs of hope and the chorus of voices raised together, and he is still praying.

-

Forty, he says, when she asks.

What? She laughs a little, rolls over and props herself up on one elbow to look at him. That's what you want?

Yeah, he says, and he doesn't even try to smile to make it a joke. My fortieth birthday. I want to see it.

She thinks he's being melodramatic.

-

The motel has a pool, a little concrete thing surrounded by cracking plastic chairs and a crooked metal fence. It's a quiet night, not very warm, and there's nobody else out when Sam leaves the room and walks across the patio, slips off his shoes and rolls up his jeans.

He sits on the tiled edge of the pool with his feet in the water, watching through the windows of the motel rooms with idle curiosity. Televisions flickering, people walking around, cars passing by on the road just beyond the fence. Not much going on at all, and they all seem removed from the cool blue-green glow, faded and faint as though he's watching them through a tunnel.

There are dead moths floating on the surface of the water and a thin film of algae on the tiles, but he doesn't really mind. It's not like he's taking a swim; he just wants some air. Dean's been out for a few hours, didn't bother to mention where he was going, but Sam isn't surprised. Six months they've been on the road together and he's used to the fact that Dean will sometimes take off for an evening. He never explains that he just needs some time to himself, but he doesn't really have to. Sam gets it.

Sam leans back on his elbows, letting his head fall back to look at the sky. He can't see much; the night is overcast and damp, unseasonably cold, and there are buzzing yellow lights all around. But he looks anyway, wonders if it's going to rain, hopes it doesn't. He had enough of the cold spring rain in Nebraska.

When he hears the telltale rumble of the Impala pulling up to the motel, he turns his head to watch. Dean spots him before he makes it to the room, and he pulls open the metal gate, walks across the cement with a brown paper bag in one hand.

"Going for a swim?" Dean asks. He sets the paper bag down on the concrete and sits beside Sam, reaches out and flicks the water with his hand. "It's kind of cold."

Sam smiles. "Wimp."

"Hey, watch yourself or I'll push you in." But there's no bite in Dean's words, just quiet amusement and more than a little tiredness. He's been protesting and bitching and shutting down Sam's concerns for a few days, but Sam still isn't convinced that he's perfectly well after his run-in with the reaper. He still winces like he has headaches sometimes, downing aspirin when he thinks Sam isn't looking.

"You can try," Sam replies easily. "We'll see who ends up in the water."

Dean doesn't say anything, just turns away from Sam and rustles the paper bag for a little bit, and when he turns back he's holding a piece of cake, just one piece in one of those plastic containers from the supermarket, the kind that had always made him wonder who the hell would buy just one piece of cake, and there are three candles stuck into the top. Dean pulls out his lighter and lights the candles, passes the cake over to Sam.

"Happy birthday," he says.

Sam gapes for a second. "I... totally forgot," he admits. And he did, somehow not noticing that the month of April had raced by like water in a gutter, not even thinking that there might be a day to look forward to at the end of all the shit that had happened recently.

Dean raises his eyebrows. "That pretty sad," he says. "Your memory must be going in your old age."

"My old age? Dude, you're older than me. Always will be. Besides," Sam holds the cake up like he's examining it suspiciously, feels the gentle heat of the candles on his face, "there are only three candles here. I can't be that old."

"Candles go by maturity, not age," Dean tells him. "Three is generous for you."

"Very funny."

"Well, what're you waiting for? I'm sure as hell not going to sing to you."

"I'm making a wish," Sam says. He watches the little flames dance for a moment, thinks about all the stupid wishes he used to make: wish for a real house, wish for a normal family, wish for Mom to be alive, wish for Dad to let him play soccer, wish for a new bike all his own rather than Dean's old one.

It's strange, he thinks, that he can remember so many of them.

But he doesn't wish for anything this time. He just takes a deep, exaggerated breath and blows the candles out.

"Did you get forks too, or do we just use our fingers?"

Dean rolls his eyes and reaches into the paper bag again, brings out a couple of plastic forks and stabs one into the cake, right into the delicate yellow flowers and tiny green leaves on the icing. It's a spring cake, girly blossoms and all, and Sam remembers, all in a rush, another birthday, years ago at the house of one of Dad's friends. The guy was a hunter but his mom was a witch or a fortune teller of some sort, and she was the oldest person Sam had ever seen, her skin so wrinkled and her hair so stringy she barely looked human. She'd taken one look at him and Dean and said, in a voice that sounded like dust and spider webs and empty houses, _One for the winter, one for the spring, but none for the summer at all, no boys for the summer._

That was all she'd said, the whole three days they were there.

Sam takes a bite of the cake, chews thoughtfully. It's too sweet, too much sugar, but he doesn't mind.

"There's... this, too." Maybe Dean's smiling just a little bit wryly, a little bit self-consciously, but in the pale light of the pool it's hard to tell. He hands a messily wrapped present over to Sam.

Sam takes it and holds it awkwardly. It's a strange shape, all angles and corners, and he can't even begin to guess what it is. He feels a strange chill, not quite joy and not quite guilt, and he splashes the water with his feet, suddenly unsure of what to say.

"Aren't you going to open it?"

Sam sets the present down beside him and takes another bite of cake. "Later," he says. "I'll open it later."

Dean looks at him for a few seconds, then shrugs and reaches over with his own fork. "Okay. But stop hogging all the cake, pig-face."


End file.
